This game has heart, I just wish playing it was much better. Great soundtrack, playful visuals and a whimsical theatre style, it is those wondrous factors that make a Sonic Team game for me. Balan Wonderworld feels like an art project that wasn’t finished, though I am able to see the spots of beauty glimmering out.

Don’t think I could ever recommend it to anyone, but if this is Yuji Naka’s last major game, well damn. There’s always Prope’s Rodea the Sky Solider to replay. Every second was an adventure…

I generally avoid playing bad games, but I actually had the displeasure of completing this one.

The first problem you will encounter is that every button does the same thing. You'll put on a suit and you'll realize that you can only do one thing with each costume, and that a lot of the suits do the same thing. Some of these costumes could have easily been mixed together to have multiple actions or have an upgrade path instead. That isn't even the worst part of the game.

The worst part is easily the dumbass Balan Bouts where you watch a cutscene and press a button at the correct time in succession. These are required to get all the collectables in the game and if you miss the perfect timing window even once, you have to complete the level and try again. Actually, I'm pretty sure you have to beat the boss to reset the chapter in order to do it again. There are 48 of these painful events in the game and you will find that you would rather go out and lay in the street than do one of those again.

This might be the worst game I have ever played and the only way I can recommend that someone even touch this game is if it is available for free, whether it is given to you by a poor soul who wanted to rid themselves of such a burden or available through a subscription like Game Pass/PS Plus. This game was $60 at launch and thankfully someone at Square Enix had a brain and decided to permanently lower it to $40. That is still way too much and they should be ashamed for asking for any amount of money for this. Do everyone a favor and make it free permanently so that people can play it for five minutes or challenge themselves to 100% it.

I love this game's atmosphere, story, music, art, pretty much everything aesthetic about it. It is so cute and it pretty much the exact story format that matches me the most. The problem is that its gameplay is horrible, the controls feel clunky and the level design do not really fit in with the suit gimmick very well, especially given that it is so easy for them to be lost. I wish this game had more time in the oven and more care, because I genuinely could have seen this becoming one of my favourite games of all time, but alas, I'm gonna give it 3 stars but it is pretty much entirely because of my own bias towards this game.

after watching several balan streams, i tried playing this on ryujinx (look man i refuse to give daddy yuji any bail money). on top of the game just feeling terrible to play, the first boss had so many graphical and camera issues going on (admittedly a ryujinx issue and not a game issue) that i literally could not beat him. i quit and promptly deleted the game off my hard drive just to spare any further headaches.

"Well, that's your fault for trying to illegally emulate a copy of the worst version when you could've bought a legal copy the PC version!" okay then jackass, give me the money for it

the only thing stopping me from giving this half a star out of five is that naoto ohshima's designs still whip ass (you #thankyouyujinaka fuckers owe him a huge apology), and frankly i genuinely do not think this game is as bad as bubsy 3d. balan is one of the most interesting kusoge out there, but at the end of the day it is still kusoge.

i have zero respect for yuji naka.

EDIT: so as it turns out, ryujinx's compatibility lists balan as "playable"; i assume the issues i had were because i didn't install the day-1 patch for it.

my point still stands about this game being awful though. whether i'll go experience the full extent of the bad is another matter entirely.